The strangest ship in the galaxy
by annafan
Summary: So many questions... Both before and after seeing TFA. What new "ships" would grace the pages of fanfic dot net? Which would be the most unlikely? Would we ever find out why R2D2 shut down for so long, only to wake at an amazingly convenient moment for the script writers? Possible slash if you squint, new warning tag of "TPreg". Definite crackfic. Merry Christmas Lady Peter.


**I'm blaming Sian22. She went to see ATF on opening night, knowing I wasn't going till the Saturday. So she challenged me to guess what "ship" would be gracing the virtual pages of fanfic dot net by the end of the opening weekend. And my brain being what it is, it immediately leapt to "what's the craziest ship you could possibly construct out of the raw ingredients in ATF?"**

"My, oh my, in all my experience of twenty thousand, three hundred and eighty two cultural systems, I have never encountered software updates of that degree of complexity. I must have been incapacitated for at least eight hours while they loaded." Threepio levered himself into an upright position, then clapped his golden hand over his visual sensor units.

An amused Wookie bark came from the other side of the crew compartment. Threepio flinched, as if his auditory circuits were unusually sensitive.

"What are you implying?" the droid asked, somewhat testily.

"I think," Han's cool voice came from Threepio's other side, "He's sayin' those 'upgrades' didn't look functional to us. More recreational if you catch my drift."

Threepio gave a harumph which sounded almost organic, then said, "The accompanying documentation mentioned a certain mild stimulant effect on neural circuitry. I certainly wasn't expecting anything quite so dramatic."

Han quit rummaging through the box of hydro-spanners and gave a deep rumbling chuckle. "Serves you right for only reading the 'quick install' page. Man, you were stoned out of your tiny golden skull."

"I merely wished to get in the party mood. The aim was to achieve a mild reconfiguring of my circuits, akin to the imbibement of a glass or two of the Corellian brandy you organic life forms favour."

"Yeah, well I think you downed the whole bottle."

Threepio sank onto the acceleration couch and held his head in his hands. Han could hear him muttering about "documentation not thorough enough", "should come with warnings", "bordering on negligent".

Chewie chipped in with a noise which might have been an expression of sympathy but could also have been "RTFM".

"Still, kept us entertained." Han's lip curled sardonically. "Before you shut down you were dancing on the holochess table, and trawling your memory banks for the equivalent of 'kriff' in every force-damn language you know."

A noise came from Threepio's direction. Perhaps it was his servomotors, but to Han's ears it sounded more like a groan.

Chewie made a half growling, half mewling noise.

"Oh yeah," Han added. "There was that bit too. That was probably the best bit. No, scratch that, definitely the best bit."

Something in the tone of Han's voice caused the droid's head to snap up. His glowing visual sensors met Han's gaze with what almost looked like trepidation.

"You caught me in the circuitry bay, now I've caught you in the circuitry bay. Looks like we're all square." Han's eyes glinted and he gave his customary lopsided grin.

"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean, Captain Solo," Threepio replied, rather primly.

Han suddenly realised that years of professional sabacc playing had left him able to spot a bluff half a parsec off, even when it was a droid trying to bluff.

"Oh I think you do. It's all coming back to you now, isn't it, Goldenrod?" He leant in, jabbing the droid's chest with his finger. "Yeah, morning after the night before. We've all been there. First it's all blank, then you get the odd fragment, then the pieces start to drop into place, then all of a sudden you're like 'Holy kriffin' force, tell me I didn't, did I?' But you did, you definitely did." His grin grew wolf-like as he got up and, long-legged and loose-limbed, ambled casually out of the rec area towards the bridge

~o~O~o~

When Han looked back, he supposed it should have been obvious. But so much had happened in the next few months - the good, the bad and the ugly - that it just hadn't registered.

Start with the good, the moments of pure, uncomplicated joy that only come a handful of times in a lifetime. He'd gotten back from that mission to be greeted by Leia. He still remembered how she'd felt in his arms, no longer just a bit thicker round the middle, but now with an unmistakable bump. With a jolt he'd realised that there were less than four months to go.

In some ways she was curiously unchanged by pregnancy. Once the exhaustion of the first few months was out the way, she was just as sparky and fiery as before. Still as driven. Not for her any softening, any glow of impending motherhood. If anything she was a bit irritable. For her, pregnancy was a means to an end, and a pretty damn uncomfortable one at that.

But birth did change her. Changed him too, he guessed, if he was honest. There was that surge of sheer joy holding the baby for the first time. For him at least. Leia later admitted it had taken a while for her to grow into it. At first the whole thing had just been so scary, so kriffin' overwhelming (not that she put it quite like that), all she'd felt was the immense weight of responsibility.

But love had crept up on her - a first smile, tiny fingers gripping hers, a chubby hand grasping a rattle for the first time, a chortling laugh at an improvised puppet show (those old "lucky" socks of his turned into Ewoks).

But there'd been the bad and the ugly. Some serious shit had gone down over the next few months. Leia was frustrated because she felt marginalised in her new role, some of her comrades seeing motherhood as incompatible with military rank. Ironically it was a woman who was the problem. General Rieekan was totally on board, never gave even a hint that he thought having a child might have blunted Leia's gift for seeing the big strategic picture. But Mon Mothma was something else. She came from a planetary culture with (to a Corellian anyway) strangely rigid views. Women _were_ allowed to get shit done in Mon Mothma's world, but only if, as far as Han could see, they swore some sort of vow of celibacy and dedicated themselves to the cause.

Leia felt marginalised and threatened. And with good reason.

Sometimes it felt like the only thing that kept them going was love -the way they loved each other, and were deeply in love with their tiny, perfect son. But then the really big shitstorm broke.

First a total comms blackout. Then the news reports began to trickle in, a tiny bit at a time. Luke's Jedi Academy destroyed, its pupils slaughtered. Luke himself rumoured to be missing. And finally R2 (who had abruptly and without much real explanation insisted on being shipped out to work beside Luke) returned. He was barely functioning, power cells almost shot, but he managed to confirm that Luke had escaped after the slaughter and had gone off on some sort of half-assed quest.

R2 had managed to download a file fragment which he asked to be passed to C3PO. Then, as if the effort had been too much, he powered down into what looked like a semi-permanent state of shutdown.

Threepio had been strangely offhand when Leia handed over the datastick.

"It's nothing important. I can't think why he bothered to waste energy downloading that." Something in the his tone left Han thinking that perhaps the droid protested too much.

Caught in the middle of a maelstrom, for the most part Han hadn't been as observant as usual. But, Luke aside (and Leia was, of course, desperately worried about her brother) there were still moments of happiness. Their son had taken to babbling cheerfully. Han (naturally) thought the constant "da da da da da" counted as his first words; Leia wasn't so sure.

Han couldn't get over how miraculous the whole thing was. Less than a year ago, their baby had still been inside Leia, leaving her grumbling about swollen ankles and back ache. Now, here he was saying "dad". Well, saying something that sounded a tiny little bit like "dad". If you squinted and stuck a finger in one ear like a bad folk singer in a down-at-heel cantina.

And that moment, lost in thought about his son and Leia, was the precise moment Han rounded a corner and nearly collided with Threepio. The golden droid looked as though he had paused mid stride, and was absent mindedly rubbing the small of his back with one hand. The whole thing was a pose he'd seen Leia adopt countless times.

Han's jaw nearly hit the deck plates.

~o~O~o~

BB8 was cute, Han had to admit that. Threepio, on the other hand, went down even further in Han's estimation. Goldenrod didn't seem exactly the maternal type. Or was that paternal? Or maybe just parental? Han couldn't quite make up his mind. Whichever way, his parenting sucked. His idea of giving BB8 a good start in life seemed to be confined to upload a load of software, give it a pat on the head and a one-way ticket off system to start its independent life. Han felt a bit sad. The little guy had been cute, and he missed having it around. Plus baby droids didn't puke or need their diapers changed.

~o~O~o~

Rey and Finn looked at the little droid. BB8 rolled around the tactical planning area. If droids had body language, then BB8's showed just how disconsolate he was. They'd looked at the memory stick and it was just a fragment of a map. All the surrounding star systems, all the stuff that would have given it context, was missing.

Then BB8 rolled past R2D2 and something very, very strange happened. Suddenly the slightly bigger droid's light array started to glow, dully at first, then brighter. R2 moved. He bleeped and burbled. It was, Leia realised, as if the last getting on for thirty years hadn't happened. He just picked up where he left off. She looked questioningly at Threepio, waiting for the customary translation. She could have sworn the taller droid looked... what? Embarrassed?

Threepio made the droid equivalent of a clearing-his-throat noise and said, "He says... 'BB8, I am your father...'"

 **Non, rien de rien, non, je ne regrette rien...**

 **Merry Christmas, Lady Peter, and thanks for all the interesting conversations and fabulous beta-ing this year.**


End file.
